


Not Alone

by JediDryad



Series: February Fluff: 28 Ways Luke and Mara Get it Together at last. [2]
Category: Star Wars Legends - All Media Types, Star Wars Legends: Hand of Thrawn Duology - Timothy Zahn
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Comfort/Angst, F/M, but not much smarter, dreamy make out session, february fluff, fixit fic, really - Freeform, remembered brotherly advice, smarter couple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-02
Updated: 2021-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:41:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,995
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29027388
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/JediDryad/pseuds/JediDryad
Summary: In Vision of the Future, Mara cons Luke into a healing trance for his minor injuries so she can go watch her ship explode all by herself. In the book, when he wakes up alone, he looks for her calling out "did you fall asleep yourself?"This story offers a supposition on what would happen if Mara had indeed fallen asleep.
Relationships: Mara Jade/Luke Skywalker
Series: February Fluff: 28 Ways Luke and Mara Get it Together at last. [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2129439
Comments: 10
Kudos: 40





	Not Alone

Luke felt consciousness return slowly. He drifted out of the soft cocoon of his healing trance back to the concrete world, and he felt warm and content. He remembered that he’d put himself in the trance at Mara’s insistence that he be operating at full strength. She’d been concerned. He smiled to himself and felt another healing rush of light shrink the longstanding ache he’d been associating with her. It was enough that she cared.

He opened his eyes and realized quickly that Mara wasn’t there. She hadn’t brought him out of the trance as he’d requested, and it had been a whole lot longer than the two hours he’d asked for.

An icy trickle of fear slid through him but he tried to brush it off knowing that the vision of her dead in a pool of water was clouding his feelings. He didn’t actually sense danger or loss.

But she had been tired too and quietly anxious, he remembered. He’d meant to ask about that but hadn’t yet found a way to do it without seeming too intrusive.

“Mara?” he called out as he worked his way down the small hallway to the rear of the Chiss ship they’d commandeered.

“Did you fall asleep yourself back there?”

Sure enough, he found her collapsed across a narrow bunk, fully dressed. For a second he felt vindicated as the tableau looked for all the world like someone who’d closed their eyes for ‘just a minute’ before succumbing to much needed sleep. He wasn’t the only one who pushed himself too hard for too long. It was good she was getting some rest.

But then he realized that her sleep didn’t seem peaceful. She twitched and fidgeted. She frowned as she moved, as though something was keeping her from peace. Something was upsetting her. Concern rolled through him as the vision he’d had of her flashed before his eyes again. The shadows he’d sensed around her before weren’t just a product of his overactive worries.

Something was wrong. Unmistakably.

“Mara.” he whispered as he crept closer to her.

He knelt down next to the bunk and gently touched her shoulder.

“Mara.”

She moaned slightly and everything in him was set on alert at the sound. Sensual. His body responded. 

Her eyes opened and they were greener than he could ever have imagined them being. Green like the depths of the Yavin jungle, green like his childhood imaginings of the mythical places in Aunt Beru’s battered storybooks.

She stared silently into his face and then her eyes flicked to his lips and his breath froze in his lungs. Almost involuntarily, he leaned in, as though reading a silent invitation. She responded and their lips met, softly, tentatively, at first. And then they fused, as a lightning bolt exploded between them. Mara fisted her hands in the front of his tunic and tugged him on to the bunk with her. Luke was caught in a wave of passion he couldn’t have imagined existed. Yes, he knew he loved her and had loved her for longer than he could really figure, but this electricity, this magnetic all consuming need. Did they have this? How could he have missed it?

He wasn’t missing it now. Now he was laser focused. There was nothing in the galaxy but Mara: her lips soft and yielding, her tongue tasting his. 

Luke followed her lead and stretched out on the narrow bunk next to her, his hands tracing her body as his lips drifted across her face. She echoed his caresses, her lips hot against his face, and her fingers slipping under his tunic to explore his skin. He gasped as her touch lit up neglected nerve endings and plunged him into an intimacy he’d never expected to have again.

“Surprised, Skywalker?” She whispered seductively as he looked down on her, bemused, and fought to catch his breath

“Why don’t you use my first name?” The plaintive edge in his voice surprised him.

She reached up and ran a hand thoughtfully through his hair. He let his eyes fall closed as he relished her touch.

“I guess I’m trying to keep a safe emotional distance.”

He shook his head at her slightly.

“Would you stop it then?” 

As the words came out, he wondered if he’d said the wrong thing, but she just raised an eyebrow.

“Okay,” she said quietly after a second’s pause. “Okay, Luke.”

She arched into his touch, and repeated his name on a moan. He dove for her lips again as though he could taste his name on them.

Hands roved as they pressed closer to each other, straining with impatience. Too much denial. Too much waiting.

And then Mara’s comlink blared with a timed alarm.

Her groan had a different tenor as she reached over and turned it off. The ardour that had been rolling off of her seconds before shifted instantly back to the dread he’d sensed earlier. It was as though she’d thrown a switch.

What was wrong?

She pulled herself to a seated position and suddenly froze as her eyes came to rest on him, crammed into the bunk with her, hair tousled, tunic unmistakably dislodged. 

“Kriff,” she muttered under her breath, “I was awake.”

“What?” Luke sat back on his heels. She’d thought she had been dreaming? Had she not wanted this? He was horrified with himself, and then he caught up with her words.

She dreamed of him?

The flame of joy was quickly doused by the grief and shadows that flooded into the emotional space between them, and she left the cabin in silence.

Utterly bewildered, he followed her, needing to keep her in sight.

He caught up with her as she jumped down out of the ship.

“Mara. What’s going on?” he called as she walked swiftly away from him.

She took a few more steps before stopping and turning around. Her eyes were filled with a devastation that cut to his core.

“I can’t tell you.” she said, and her whole body seemed to tremble as she turned away from him again and resumed her path.

Luke squeezed his eyes shut for a moment. He felt like he was flying off in all directions at once: worried, bewildered, achingly frustrated. He could still taste her lips and feel the way her body moved against his. 

And now she was stalking away from him and wouldn’t talk to him. It was unacceptable!

He was about to give voice to his frustrations when something tickled in the back of his mind.

“Kid,” he heard Han’s voice in his head, “I’m not too proud of how I handled it.”

It had been mere weeks after Endor. Leia had been at some meeting and he’d gone to help Han run maintenance on the Falcon while Chewbacca was away.

They’d talked about that night in the Ewok Village.

“She told me she couldn’t tell me what was wrong.” He’d smirked ruefully, “I guess you’d just dropped it all on her and she just didn’t know where to begin.” 

“You could have given me a heads up y’know.” It was an admonishment without real reproach. Han knew how hard the revelations had been for both of them.

“She told me she needed to be held.” He shook his head. “I was confused and jealous. I almost let her cool it there outside instead.”

He paused.

“That would have been a mistake. I would have regretted that forever.”

Luke watched Mara begin an ascent up the ridge at the edge of their makeshift landing pad. Whatever made her eyes look like that, it was more important than the blend of emotions fighting for supremacy inside him.

He set off behind her, and soon, he was keeping pace with her climb.

As they reached a ledge and picked their way along it, he could sense her growing dread and grief, but it didn’t seem to pair with any impending danger in the Force.

“Mara,” He offered tentatively. “It might help if you give me some sense of what sort of attack we should expect.”

She glanced over at him and her expression dug into him like a blade. “No, Luke, it’s not that kind of danger.”

He nodded even though he had no idea what she meant and followed her in silence until she found a spot she seemed to like and sat down. He sat too. 

“What is it then?” He wanted to demand, “What’s going on?”

He didn’t though. He just sat there. 

Mara felt brittle in the Force, as though a single blow could shatter her - and he could tell she was expecting that blow to come soon.

She pointed out the shipyard they’d sabotaged on their way out of the fortress.

They needed to do more than just rip a few wires and slash a few connectors with a lightsaber if they were going to actually stop Parck and the Chiss from flying to Bastion.

Mara knew that, he realized as he suppressed the urge to act. She had a plan. Once again the vision drifted across his mind of her lying in that pool.

“Mara,” he didn’t hide his nerves, “does your plan involve water?”

“What?” She looked at him like he was crazy, and an intrusion. Clearly not.

“Nothing.”

He knew that wasn’t convincing, but it seemed to break through her brittle shell.

She turned to face him, her expression tight.

“Why did you come?”

“You needed a ride home.”

“Sure, but anyone could have come get me and you have a whole galaxy to look after. Why did you agree to come?”

She’d felt embarrassed he remembered. He’d never wanted that for her.

“I told you not to worry about it.”

“And I didn’t.” Tartly, reproving. This wasn’t about her feelings. This was about information. And she was talking at last so he had to answer.

“I had a vision...of you, and I knew I needed to be here.”

She was silent. He could tell that was not the answer she’d expected.

“Mara what are you planning to do?”

Determination filled her face and sense.

“Blow up the hangar and all the ships so they can’t get anywhere near Bastion for months.”

“But how…” the pieces clicked and his jaw dropped as he thought back on the beckon call he’d given her when he’d arrived and her disappearance in the hangar hours before. She’d spliced it into the communications array. She was calling the Jade’s Fire out of orbit to its demise: to end the war.

“Mara, no!” Grief on her behalf warred inside him with abject relief that her sabotage strategy was unlikely to result in her drowning.

And then he realized he was angry. She shouldn’t have to do this. The Empire had taken everything from her: more than it had ever stolen from him. And she’d built a life out of the ashes and crumbs. She shouldn’t have to give up her home, her only real possession. It wasn’t fair. It wasn’t justice. It was just more sacrifice.

“I need to.” 

Drawn by something in her tone, he looked at her. Amid the grief and abject devastation in her eyes, he saw a clarity of purpose he remembered feeling only once before: a certainty that, despite the objections and dire warnings of others, she was making the right choice.

“It’s my decision.” she averred.

I have to try. He heard his own voice say to Leia.

“Okay.” he sighed and, with the sigh he let out his rage at what was being asked of her.

“Okay, but you’re not doing it alone.”

Mara searched his face for a moment, and then, her eyes sparking with unshed tears, she let him pull her into his arms.

“I’m not. I’m really not, am I?” she murmured incredulously as he wrapped her tightly in his embrace and promised with every fibre in his being that he would never let her go.


End file.
